Chapter 10
She is surprised when the landline rings, and it takes her a few moments to find the handset.
Kristin would text her if she wanted to get in touch, so, she deduces, it must be her mother, who tended to stay up late watching re-runs of old TV shows and critiquing everyone’s performance.
She might have some stern words to utter about that scything scene.
Poppy slings back a gulp of her G&T, and answers.
‘Hi, Mum!’ she says jauntily, trying not to let any of her borderline maudlin mood seep down the phone lines to Shropshire. Everything in the garden must always be rosy, as far as her mother is concerned, or she’ll just worry about her.
‘Erm … no, I’m afraid not,’ comes the reply. It’s a man’s voice, someone older, deep in tone and precise in enunciation. ‘Is that Miss Poppy Barnard?’
‘It is,’ she says, starting to get annoyed now. ‘To whom am I speaking?’
‘My name is Lewis Clarke-Smith,’ he says, ‘and I was a friend of your mother’s.’
Poppy barely registers the name, and is no longer concerned with his enunciation. She only hears one word of that sentence: ‘was’.
The glass falls from her hands, and spills the remainder of her drink across her Lycra-clad thighs.